Archive for kindle

I have successfully lent a Kindle book!
A friend of mine in Minneapolis recently purchased a used Kindle. We share many tastes in romance and speculative fiction, so we decided to give the lending function a try. We went through our respective lists of e-books and compared what we had. It was a little amusing to see that we had several of the same books already.

The major flaw of Kindles, as most people know, is that they use a proprietary format for e-books, and only allow sharing on a limited basis. However, when a Kindle is what you have, even the limited sharing can be useful. (I have a Kindle rather than a Nook or other reader because I received Amazon gift certificates, which made it much cheaper for me.)

Here’s the basic information on lending from Amazon’s website: “Eligible Kindle books can be loaned once for a period of 14 days. The borrower does not need to own a Kindle — Kindle books can also be read using our free Kindle reading applications for PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android devices. Not all books are lendable — it is up to the publisher or rights holder to determine which titles are eligible for lending. The lender will not be able to read the book during the loan period.”

As it turned out, several of the books I would have liked to lend her were from publishers who did not allow lending. However, eventually we decided on a book by an author my friend had read before, with mixed results–in other words, a book she likely wouldn’t have bought for herself, but wouldn’t mind trying. Incidentally, the book was from an electronic-only publisher that specialized in romance.

Once we’d found a lendable book she wanted to read, the rest was very easy. She emailed me the address she uses for her Kindle. I went into “Manage Your Kindle,” found the book, and from its action menu chose “lend this book.” A window opened where I could enter her Kindle’s address. I sent the book, and it was done!

Two weeks later, I got a message stating the book had been “returned” to me. Easy. It’s not such a great feature I’d recommend Kindle over other e-readers, but if you already have one, it’s useful.

I read everywhere. If I don’t have a book with me (or these days, my Kindle), I constantly glance around, feeling as if I’ve forgotten something. Like a limb. Going out for the day always involves deciding what I’m going to bring with me to read.
For the most part, I read fiction. I read it fast, in greedy gulps. When I was younger, up through my first years after college, I tended to re-read favorite books, or often just my favorite parts of those books. Favorites from the library, ones I’d checked out over and over to re-read, were some of the first used paperbacks I bought for myself–for the most part, I couldn’t afford to buy new books, but I bought as many used ones as I could. I wanted to own them. I wanted to make them even more mine than reading them had done. Even now, I still have that strange sort of emotional and intellectual greed.

I don’t think it’s the books themselves, I think it’s the stories. I sometimes get impatient and skim if I’m not enjoying the story or the author’s style, but even in those cases I often want to know how the story comes out. I’ve been trying to train myself not to do this, to simply stop reading if I’m not enjoying the book. There are too many books in the world (and in my terrifying TBR piles) to waste time on dull stories, or stories whose moral implications revolt me.

And…I think I was supposed to be talking about mechanics. I have several ways in which I read. First is immersion. That’s when, for example, I spend most of a Sunday lounging on my bed reading a book, with occasional pauses for hot tea, petting the cat, etc.. Or I sometimes immerse myself after a long day at work. When immersed, I stick with the same book for a long time, or until I’ve finished it.

Second is reading in the cracks. I read while waiting for the bus in the morning, on the bus, while eating lunch, in the restroom, while waiting in line at the post office, etc., etc., etc.. I have been known to choose the bus over walking on a nice day because I really want to read, and I can’t read while walking. Well, I can and have, but I live in a city, and it’s not wise or safe to do so. In this kind of reading, I might be carrying around the same book all day, or I might be reading several books at once (usually on my Kindle).
I’m not sure if reading before bed is a third category; it’s sort of a mixture of the first two. It’s rare that I’m so tired I can’t read before I go to sleep. Sometimes it’s the current fictional offering, or light nonfiction, which is likely to keep me up later than I planned. Sometimes it’s dense nonfiction that I am deliberately parceling out, to keep myself from skimming. Books of that type are also my usual “insomnia books” for when I wake in the wee hours – a few months ago, I finished a yearlong reread of The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination in that way.

Fourth is reading while on the elliptical, at the gym; if I have the right reading material, I lose track of time passing, which is not the case when I listen to music, unless the songs are very long, and then it only works up to a point. My gym reading has only been going on for about a year and a half. I started with printouts of newsletters and articles, then bought a Kindle, and now I use that pretty exclusively in the gym. My gym reading is usually easily-accessible fiction and nonfiction. I’ve found dense sentences or slow-moving stories can’t hold my attention if I’m exercising at the same time. Henry James is terrible for elliptical reading. Plotty genre stories are excellent for elliptical reading.

I also often read samples of new writers while on the elliptical; the short length is very suitable for the purpose, and my judgement is affected by the exercise, so I’m less likely to buy something, when I’m trying not to buy too many more books! On the other hand, twice I have bought a new book with my Kindle, while exercising, after having read the sample, and then continued to read it while I continued exercising. Yes, I’m a bookoholic. Since I bought the Kindle, I have sampled a great many more new authors, recommended to me or not, than I have done for a long time.

On the Kindle, I’ve learned I tend to be more of a butterfly, flitting from book to book. This might be a practical result of having so many books available on a single device.

This is getting kind of long, so I’ll stop for now. I think I’ve covered the basics of my reading practice.

I’ve been wondering – how often have you found a book on Amazon through their category search?
Apparently, those categories are somewhat fueled by tags applied to items by users. Many items with the same tag, for instance “erotic romance,” can be found through clicking on a tag. Amazon’s tagging FAQ.

I confess, I have not used this functionality very much, but I have been thinking about it more lately. I made sure to tag each of my own books with relevant tags, for instance “world war one” for The Moonlight Mistress. It’s difficult to tell if this makes any major difference in sales, as this is only one retailer, but at the very least I hope tagging makes my books easier for people to find if they’re already looking for them, or looking for books like them. I think it will be particularly useful in the long run.

I went on a bit of a tagging spree and tagged a lot of other people’s books, too. The more people choose the same tag for a book, the more easily it can be found. One thing I noticed is that people can add tags that are not useful for categorization, such as tags that are actually complaints about the price of a book. It’s possible to disagree with a tag as well as agreeing with it – click on the tiny arrow next to the tag for this option.

I’m going to keep an eye out for articles and commentary on tagging and its results.

I have purchased a Kindle! My first surprise, when I announced my purchase of an e-reader on Twitter, was how many people immediately demanded details. So I guess others have been pondering which e-reader, if any at all, just as much as I have.My decision was based on a whole string of factors including reviews, personal discussions, and, umm, me having a gift certificate.

Before the actual device arrived, I was tickled to learn I could add content while it was in transit. So I bought a few books I’d wishlisted, samples of others, and then started looking at what was available for free download.

Wow.

I don’t know yet how good the formatting is on all of those free books, but I was very pleased to find that a number of classics on my personal TBR were available for free, and I won’t have to check out large musty tomes from the library. We’ll see if that makes me go through my “classics” TBR faster, or not. At least I’m one step closer to finally reading some Wilkie Collins (The Moonstone and The Woman in White), and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, among others.

I will defintiely share more of my experiences with the Kindle once I actually have it in hand. ETA: It arrived late yesterday.